Wait, What? Ep. 244: The Snides of March

0:00-17:58: Greetings! Graeme is recovering from con crud. And a report from Emerald City Comic Con. Discussed: meetings with Hannah Blumenreich, Aud Koch, Evan Shaner, and more; a discussion of comics news around the Con that were not announced at the Con itself; the possible rebound of Marvel; and more.

17:58-33:33: One of those bits of news is the Erica Henderson is leaving The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, so we talk about what that will mean to the book, what we’ve appreciated about the North/Henderson run, and more.

33:33-58:47: The first issue of Oblivion Song by Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici is out, and with it comes the news that this is something that Kirkman has been planning for a long time. How’s the first issue? And what are Kirkman’s plans? Also discussed: Prism Stalker #1 by Sloane Leong; the Planet of the Apes scale to measuring good storytelling.

58:47-1:28:08: Thanks to a recent anniversary sale, Graeme has been mainlining fifteen hundred pages of Judge Dredd. Discussed: The Pit; Brothers of the Blood; Tour of Duty; and the newly re-available M.A.C.H. 1collection created by Pat Mills and Enio, Robert Flynn, Niles Allen, John Cooper, John Wagner, and others; One Eyed Jack by John Wagner and John Cooper; the upcoming Megazine; and others.

1:28:08-2:01:05: Milk Wars, the Young Animal/DCU crossover has ended, and we are here to mull it over, especially the last issue of the crossover: The Doom Patrol/JLA Special #1 by Gerard Way, Steve Orlando, Dale Eaglesham, and Nick Derington. Also: discussed Shade, The Changing Girl; Jeff Lemire doing The Terrifics at DC, but also returning to Marvel to write The Sentry; The Life of Captain Marvel miniseries by Margaret Stohl, and Carlos Pacheco; and more.

2:01:05-end: Closing comments! Along with Mark Thomas Gibson, Jeff is going to be a guest on the excellent We Eat Art podcast by John Mejias and Zak Smith to discuss the Black Panther! Look for us on Stitcher!Itunes! Twitter together and separately: Graeme and Jeff! Matt! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including the kind crew at American Ninth Art Studios and Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for their continuing support of this podcast.

Next Week: Baxter Building Ep. 39! Read issues #342-349 of Fantastic Four by the might Walt Simonson and join us!

There is a lot of western focus to the talk of long run series with the same creator that are also provided and the huge draw of a lot of Japanese series and one of the huge draws of Shonen comics, time skips and side plots working their way back into the main story and authors creating a path out of corners they build for themselves.

I don’t know if you all saw it, but there was a TCJ takedown of Oblivion Song that raised at least one hackle. For what it’s worth, 80 cents), the reviewer seemed intent on reading the new American fascism into the text, which struck one commenter as at best an over reading, but probably a bad faith reading. What I found interesting was the fact that the reviewer’s chief concern was with how the series traffics in the hoary old “white male (body) in pain” trope, which is hardly specific to Kirkman, though it’s central to his oeuvre.

Anyway, this got me to thinking about why I can’t connect to Mr. Miracle, and I think it’s because of the old “white male body in pain” trope, which I find ideologically suspect, as it ends up being a “get out of jail free card” for all sorts of bad behavior. It’s like that Frankie Boyle line about how in America we’ll invade your country, kill a bunch of people, and then 20 years later make a movie about how sad all of that killing made us.

Anyway, based on the first 5 or so issues of Mr. Miracle, it seems like King is willing to acknowledge that the white male body in pain is an unhelpful pop culture figure, but he seems largely unwilling to interrogate or subvert it. There was a whiff of the same in his Vision miniseries, and of course it was all over Sheriff of Baghdad, though it was somewhat mitigated by other characters. Is there some of this happening in Batman, and if there was, would King’s Batman be that different from anyone else’s Batman post Miller?

Sorry to ramble on about this stuff in your comments section a week after the release of the podcast, but you prodded loose some thoughts and I felt compelled to chime in.

Curious if you had a chance to read Wagner/Ezquerra’s recent(ish) Block Judge serial in Dredd. It’s not quite as good as The Pit, but has a lot in common, with Dredd being forced to take over as the resident “block judge” of a particularly messed-up block, with a small team assisting him. Lots of fun, with a great dark joke at the end.